Thread: Mission accomplished

The farm hunting debate after my last post was entertaining. I decided to give this public land "proper" hunting a go myself.

As I stepped onto the public land, all sensors went haywire. The DEER ALARM went off immediately. By complete luck, I happened to cross the boundary between the farm and DOC land right where a red deer had been bedding down. It stank of deer. OK, good start, carry on.

Moving out into the scrub, I sloshed my way down through a labyrinth of trails to try and find a spot to cross the creek. It had been raining hard on and off for three days. The hills were shedding water everywhere. I bum slided and swore a lot. Everything including the rifle was covered in papa mud.

The idea was to make it to a spot where a spur angled down towards the creek. That spur had looked like a deer highway to me, in the binos from the other side of the valley. Getting onto the spur and some ways up the other side was easier than I thought, despite the heavy rain. I was blowing that fucking hard that a rest-stop was forced upon me.

With the rain at my back I could glass up the spur without getting the optics all wet. Nothing doing. About to move on, when with the (blurred) naked eye I could of sworn I saw movement. Quick check. OK, right, calm down, go into tactical mode.

Not going to bore you with the details of tactical mode, suffice to say there was a great deal of crawling through mud and shite to get a decent pozzie from which to take a steep uphill shot off a hummock. And then a lot of fucking around with the bipod. Easily the worst shot to take, farkin' hate uphill shots. But credit again the DPT chassis - it just works.



Pole-axed. Just lay down. A handsome, symmetrical (give-or-take) 12-pointer with fat as back steaks and hindquarters. Lots of gutsy effort followed, trying not to die of a heart attack on the way out but all good. Carry an EPIRB, just in case.